Acts of sexual violenceTraditional or sexual slavery, forced labour, child marriage… From Uyghurs to Rohingyas, from Mali to Serbia, many minorities suffer from forms of exploitation, points out Tomoya Obokata, UN rapporteur on contemporary slavery.
The word seems to belong to another time. But according to a recent report by Tomoya Obokata, UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, the practice still exists. Worse, it seems almost hereditary – linked to the history of the countries and the minorities that make them up. “Traditional” or sexual slavery, forced labour, debt or domestic servitude, child marriage or forced marriage… The list is long and doesn’t spare any continent.
The conclusions of this recently published 22-page report will be discussed in the Human Rights Council in mid-September. The Japanese expert, who is also a professor of international law and human rights at the British University of Keele, based his drafting on the observations of national and regional human rights bodies, the United Nations, as well as academic and civil society work.
30 years ago, in December 1992, the UN General Assembly adopted by consensus the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities. In its Article 2, this text sanctifies “the right to enjoy one’s own culture, to profess and practice one’s own religion and to use one’s own language, privately and publicly, freely and without interference or any form of discrimination”. Three decades later, this right is still being violated around the world. For the independent expert, the inability to guarantee this is “tightly linked” to non-respect of other rights, including “lack of access to quality education and decent work, which can be at the root of contemporary forms of slavery”.
Double punishment for women
In his inventory, Tomoya Obokata first addresses “traditional” slavery, which has been legally abolished worldwide but continues to affect minorities, especially in the Sahel. In Mali, the descendants of slaves “continue to be considered the property of their masters” and often work without pay. In Asia, the practice is similar but falls under “forced labour”, although the rapporteur acknowledges that certain acts “may constitute enslavement”, as in China, where the Xinjiang region targets the Uyghur population along with the Kazakhs and other minorities.
The report therefore describes Chinese “systems set up under the leadership of the state” with, for example, vocational training for these minorities while they are “imprisoned and placed as apprentices”. Other indications of the forced nature of the maneuver: “excessive surveillance, abusive living and working conditions, restricted movement, threats, sexual physical violence and other inhuman and degrading treatment”. On the American continent it is people of African descent who are discriminated against and victims of forced labour. The practice also exists in Europe, Central and Southeast Asia.
For minority women, the penalty is doubled. In Niger, the wahaya goes further: it consists of buying a slave girl “to supposedly make her a fifth wife.” The practice mixes child marriage, sexual slavery, and slavery by descent, as it often affects the descendants of slaves. In the Arab Gulf States, “the domestic bondage of migrant women and girls is worrying because they are victims of double discrimination, as migrants and as women,” the report states.
In South America, such as Brazil or Colombia, the text highlights the situation of women of African descent: no vacation, no rest and dependence on employers. Finally, sexual slavery is addressed. Again, the practice is widespread: in Ethiopia or Burma, where Rohingya women are “systematically” sexually abused.
“Restricted access to justice”
In the part devoted to the causes of these practices, one seems to read a case study – on a world scale – of the systems of social reproduction and maintenance of “institutionalized” and “systematic” discrimination. Cultural baggage, access to education, parental relationships, stigmatization, quasi-hereditary socio-professional category… It’s all there. “Due to the restricted access of members of minorities to decent work, also within the EU, poverty is passed on from generation to generation”, sums up the expert.
Only this is about contemporary slavery. “Excluded communities are often overlooked in public policies and budgets,” the report continues. When they witness human rights violations […]they generally have limited access to courts and legal remedies.” In some countries, such as Cambodia, Colombia or Serbia, minorities “have no access to birth registration and identity papers”. With no legal existence and therefore little protection, they are the ideal targets of various forms of slavery. And they are not the only ones: “Undocumented and irregular migrants are more vulnerable because they are often afraid to ask the authorities for help as they risk being arrested, detained and deported.”
Among the hundred recommendations, the author insists on the need to guarantee equal “access” (to education, land rights, public services, justice, etc.) for persons belonging to minorities. And about the need to include them in public life, while their exclusion has been reported from nine countries, including Finland, Spain, the United States, Latvia or the Czech Republic. The aim is to limit discrimination and prejudice caused by, among other things, “their lack of participation” and the fact that they have no “voice on the matter”.